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The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders [Literary Excerpt]

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Daniel Defoe's novel The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, published in 1722, is a useful historical text for examining the everyday lives of female children as well as the possibilities of girlhood in 18th-century British society. In many ways, Moll Flanders—the illegitimate daughter of a female felon—exemplifies the position of orphaned girls in early modern Britain. At the same time, Moll's character also reveals the range of possibilities utilized by girls who resisted confining social customs and refused marginalizing literary conventions. In this selection, what strategies does Moll use to defy the typical position of girls in society? What authority does Moll claim as the novel's narrator? Compare the figure of Moll to the treatment of other female characters in other novels from the period (such as Matilda in Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto) as well as girls in works published later.

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I was now in a way to be provided for; for though I was not a parish charge upon this or that part of the town by law, yet as my case came to be known, and that I was too young to do any work, being not above three years old, compassion moved the magistrates of the town to order some care to be taken of me, and I became one of their own as much as if I had been born in the place.

In the provision they made for me, it was my good hap to be put to nurse, as they call it, to a woman who was indeed poor but had been in better circumstances, and who got a little livelihood by taking such as I was supposed to be, and keeping them with all necessaries, till they were at a certain age, in which it might be supposed they might go to service or get their own bread.

This woman had also had a little school, which she kept to teach children to read and to work; and having, as I have said, lived before that in good fashion, she bred up the children she took with a great deal of art, as well as with a great deal of care.

But that which was worth all the rest, she bred them up very religiously, being herself a very sober, pious woman, very house-wifely and clean, and very mannerly, and with good behaviour. So that in a word, expecting a plain diet, coarse lodging, and mean clothes, we were brought up as mannerly and as genteelly as if we had been at the dancing-school.

I was continued here till I was eight years old, when I was terrified with news that the magistrates (as I think they called them) had ordered that I should go to service. I was able to do but very little service wherever I was to go, except it was to run of errands and be a drudge to some cookmaid, and this they told me of often, which put me into a great fright; for I had a thorough aversion to going to service, as they called it (that is, to be a servant), though I was so young; and I told my nurse, as we called her, that I believed I could get my living without going to service, if she pleased to let me; for she had taught me to work with my needle, and spin worsted, which is the chief trade of that city, and I told her that if she would keep me, I would work for her, and I would work very hard.

I talked to her almost every day of working hard; and, in short, I did nothing but work and cry all day, which grieved the good, kind woman so much, that at last she began to be concerned for me, for she loved me very well.

One day after this, as she came into the room where all we poor children were at work, she sat down just over against me, not in her usual place as mistress, but as if she set herself on purpose to observe me and see me work. I was doing something she had set me to; as I remember, it was marking some shirts which she had taken to make, and after a while she began to talk to me. 'Thou foolish child,' says she, 'thou art always crying (for I was crying then); 'prithee, what dost cry for?' 'Because they will take me away,' says I, 'and put me to service, and I can't work housework.' 'Well, child,' says she, 'but though you can't work housework, as you call it, you will learn it in time, and they won't put you to hard things at first.' 'Yes, they will,' says I, 'and if I can't do it they will beat me, and the maids will beat me to make me do great work, and I am but a little girl and I can't do it'; and then I cried again, till I could not speak any more to her.

This moved my good motherly nurse, so that she from that time resolved I should not go to service yet; so she bid me not cry, and she would speak to Mr. Mayor, and I should not go to service till I was bigger.

Well, this did not satisfy me, for to think of going to service was such a frightful thing to me, that if she had assured me I should not have gone till I was twenty years old, it would have been the same to me; I should have cried, I believe, all the time, with the very apprehension of its being to be so at last.

When she saw that I was not pacified yet, she began to be angry with me. 'And what would you have?' says she; 'don't I tell you that you shall not go to service till your are bigger?' 'Ay,' said I, 'but then I must go at last.' 'Why, what?' said she; 'is the girl mad? What would you be--a gentlewoman?' 'Yes,' says I, and cried heartily till I roared out again.

This set the old gentlewoman a-laughing at me, as you may be sure it would. 'Well, madam, forsooth,' says she, gibing at me, 'you would be a gentlewoman; and pray how will you come to be a gentlewoman? What! will you do it by your fingers' end?'

'Yes,' says I again, very innocently.

'Why, what can you earn?' says she; 'what can you get at your work?'

'Threepence,' said I, 'when I spin, and fourpence when I work plain work.'

'Alas! poor gentlewoman,' said she again, laughing, 'what will that do for thee?'

'It will keep me,' says I, 'if you will let me live with you.' And this I said in such a poor petitioning tone, that it made the poor woman's heart yearn to me, as she told me afterwards.

'But,' says she, 'that will not keep you and buy you clothes too; and who must buy the little gentlewoman clothes?' says she, and smiled all the while at me.

'Then I will have no victuals,' says I, again very innocently; 'let me but live with you.'

'Why, can you live without victuals?' says she.

'Yes,' again says I, very much like a child, you may be sure, and still I cried heartily.

I had no policy in all this; you may easily see it was all nature; but it was joined with so much innocence and so much passion that, in short, it set the good motherly creature a-weeping too, and she cried at last as fast as I did, and then took me and led me out of the teaching-room. 'Come,' says she, 'you shan't go to service; you shall live with me'; and this pacified me for the present.

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Title

Heinz-Hermann Köhler [Paintings]

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Heinz-Hermann Köhler grew up in a country village in Lower Saxony. In 1936 after completing elementary school, he moved in with relatives in nearby Hildesheim, a mid-sized provincial town, so he could attend the Agricultural School. In contrast to the relatively homogenous and intimate village of his childhood, Hildesheim's economic and social composition was diverse. People of many different classes, occupations, and religious faiths lived and worked in close proximity. Heinz-Hermann fills most of his watercolors and pencil drawings with the rich texture of town life: the games children played, the work adults did, and the movement of vehicles. He also depicted holiday celebrations which, in light of the recent Great Depression, display a relative wealth of decoration and toys that must have impressed him.

Heinz-Hermann was also impressed and influenced by the politics of the Third Reich. In the run up to a plebiscite, he captured the plethora of flags and calls for a "yes" vote on the street. In "Help Them!," Heinz-Hermann imaginatively enters into the domestic space of a typical German farm family, annotating that they have "no work/nothing to eat/the stable is empty." If he is personally familiar with their plight, he nonetheless views the farm from the outside, in a style otherwise associated with romantic images of the countryside but that is here framed by a political slogan: "Give to W[inter] H[elp]." Young Germans were often encouraged to raise money for this Nazi charity; here Heinz-Hermann reiterates a charged political appeal for charity and solidarity with farmers who are implicitly fellow "Aryans."

These images are rather different from classic propaganda images of Nazi parades, rallies, or broadsides, but they are not innocent of Nazi politics. What do they tell us about how Nazi politics operate in everyday life? The artist captured the dynamism of capitalism, urbanity, and modernity for instance in the broadsides he discovered on an pillar which advertised cigarettes next to calls to support 'freedom' with a 'yes' vote. What do they tell us about how children experienced the Third Reich?

Heinz-Hermann never returned to the farm. He was conscripted into the German Army during World War II to help conquer "living space" for the Aryan race. He was killed in battle.

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British Parliamentary Papers [Official Documents]

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Despite efforts to resist, by the end of the 19th century, almost all of the Middle East had fallen under the control of European powers. Whether in the form of a protectorate or colony, European powers made changes to the indigenous educational system that impacted children.

Europeans offered European-style education to a very small elite group of Middle Eastern students and this education was intended to shape the children into abiding colonial subjects by teaching them that their civilization was backwards. These government schools created under the Europeans charged tuition that most families could not afford. The majority of children were deemed unfit for modern education and colonialists circulated the idea that Middle Eastern parents did not value education.

Expansion of educational opportunities for non-elite classes was also gradual in Europe, the timeline of legislation similar to policies in lands under colonial rule or protectorates. Efforts to provide basic literacy and prepare students for specific types of career training also followed a pattern of using religious institutions as a base of expansion, adding training in reading, writing, arithmetic, and other subjects to enhance the skill set of future workers and identify talented youth for further training in specialized schools. Such children would receive scholarships or stipends to attend boarding schools organized under military-like discipline. Examples of such institutions were the Muhammad Ali's schools of engineering, military science, and medicine.

The following selection relates to education in Egypt under the British protectorate. The single most common feature of most Egyptian childhoods during the British protectorate was participation in the labor force, particularly the cotton industry on which the Egyptian economy was almost exclusively based. During the protectorate, the demand for labor of children and the acquisition of literacy were inversely related.

Many villages circulated petitions demanding the colonizers provide them with schools, but colonial administrators did not fund widespread education efforts. The British justified a lack of investment in indigenous education by saying it was not desired by parents who were too “dead” to know the value of education, as the following selection indicates. The British also attempted to pit the minority Christian Egyptian parents against Muslim Egyptian parents in their efforts to keep the Egyptian population uneducated.

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House of Parliament, "Reports by Her Majesty's Agent and Consul-General on the Finances, Administration, and Condition of Egypt and the Sudan in 1899," (1900). Annotated by Heidi Morrison.

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The British Parliamentary Papers of 1900 contain a chart on the proportion of Muslims and Christians in government schools in Egypt. The report following the chart reads:

"These figures would appear to show that the Mohamedan population generally are less fully alive than the Copts to the advantages of education."

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Paleolithic Finger Flutings (Cave Drawing)

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This image from Chamber A1 of Rouffignac Cave was created by a young girl we posit to be between four and five years old from her height and the places in the
cave where she has chosen to make her flutings. She was part of a group of people who visited the cave during the Upper Paleolithic Period (sometime
between 20,000 and 11,000 years ago). It seemed she was part of a group which included 8 individuals, of whom at least 3 were children. This panel is at the entrance to a chamber a half km into the cave and what is striking about it is not only its design but also that it was drawn with two hands at the same time which means this individual wasn't holding a torch at the time
of her drawing. This young girl is one of the most prolific fluters in Rouffignac. We find her flutings in almost every chamber and a panel very similar to this one appears 1.5 km further into the cave. She also produced the first known tectiform, a symbolic form, produced by a child. As time goes on, we hope to learn more and more about the people who visited and
decorated Rouffignac cave during the Paleolithic.

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Leslie Van Gelder, personal photograph.

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Title

Tophet of Carthage [Object]

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These images show a stone grave marker carved with symbols and a terracotta funerary urn containing the charred remains of an infant. The Tophet of Carthage is a cemetery for infants in the ruins of the North African city of Carthage, now located in a suburb of Tunis. It was once located on the edge of ancient Carthage, which was destroyed by the Romans in 146 BCE. The cemetery is the subject of historical controversy because both ancient texts and archaeological evidence point to the possibility that the children buried in the tophet were child sacrifices. The cemetery was used for over 600 years, between 730 BCE and 146 BCE. Changes in the grave markers and burials indicate three different periods of use.

The Carthage tophet has no adult graves, and many of the grave stelae are marked with dedications to Baal and Tanit, the patron deities of Carthage. The word tophet comes from the Hebrew topheth derived from "drum" or "place of burning," an open area for sacrifice. Numerous tophets have been identified in the eastern Mediterranean region. The Tophet of Carthage, excavated between 1920 and 1970, shows burials of young infants, interred in small vaults with beads and amulets, and sometimes the bones of small animals. Low thrones or stones marked the early graves.

In later periods, buried a layer above the original graves, sandstone markers were covered with stucco and painted yellow, red, or blue. Narrow, limestone grave stelae with pediments appear, inscribed with representations of Baal and Tanit. Many featured the sign of Tanit shown on the stela in the image—a triangle with a disc at the apex and a line through the apex with upturned ends, which looks perhaps like a child or a doll with outstretched arms.

Jewish and Christian scriptures refer to places of child sacrifice. Roman writer Diodorus Siculus described the sacrifice of upper class children to the deity Baal in 310 BCE, a reference seen as the main source of the claim of child sacrifice. Later elaborations made by writers even into the 19th century include the description of a metal fire pit in the form of the deity, with grates that mechanically tipped infants into the fire. Sacrifices to appease the deities or to ask favors seem to be supported by some inscriptions, but there may also be evidence that small animals were sacrificed in place of the children.

On the other side of the controversy are claims that the archaeological evidence is too sparse and inconclusive, and the texts may have been written out of ulterior motives, especially in view of Rome's wars with Carthage. No other classical sources mention the practice, and biblical references do not mention the tophet of Carthage.

There is also evidence that children's burial grounds were merely separated from adult cemeteries as well as pictorial evidence that the graves were regularly kept and supplied with offerings. The fact that burials were sometimes massed, and that some graves contain more than one child, may be evidence of disease epidemics as the population of Carthage grew. The inscriptions that refer to gifts and offerings may refer to sacrifice, or may refer to the hope of regeneration or fertility to the family who lost the child, meanings included in concepts surrounding both Tanit and Baal as deities.

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Slave Women and Children [Law]

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Although marriage was not forbidden between Europeans and slaves or other non-Europeans, it was quite rare and entailed a drop in social status for the European. Nevertheless, sexual relationships occurred—sometimes coerced, sometimes by mutual agreement. The children born to slave women by these relationships were seldom openly acknowledged by their fathers, and thus usually followed the fate of their mothers. Religious and secular authorities were not at ease with this situation. This can be seen in church proclamations that called on Europeans to baptize all their slave children, and secular laws that sought to regulate the living conditions of slave children, especially of mixed race. In the following excerpt, it is noteworthy that the "children of free heathen" are also mentioned. These "heathens" were probably not Khoikhoi, but rather former slaves, either from East Africa or Asia, who bought or earned their freedom and were known as Free Blacks. In this case, the designation "heathen" might also refer to followers of Islam.

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"Laws and Regulations Respecting Slaves at the Colony the Cape of Good Hope since the Year 1658 till a. 1805." In Dutch laws translated into English. 1806. James Ford Bell Library. University of Minnesota.

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20 June 1766

That in future the Statutary Law that no Children of free Heathen begotten on their female Slaves, whether the Estate be beforehand or not, may be sold, nor the Mothers of those Children, should the Estate be solvent, shall be observed, and it is likewise understood to forbid all Executors and Administrators of Estates without Exception and they are hereby forbidden accordingly to sell Children begotten by Christians on their Slaves whether the Estate be solvent or not; with authority to allow such a Child or Children to follow those who may apply for them and be willing to bring up those otherwise Unfortunates in the Reformed Religion; or in default of such should the children be descended from European Blood, but not otherwise, to give them to the Deacons of the Reformed Congregation in order to be brought up in the Poor House & instructed in the above mentioned manner.

That towards the Encouragement of Fidelity among the Slaves, with regard to those who possess them in property, such of them as rescue their Masters or Mistresses from any great Danger of their Lives or save them from being murdered, or use their utmost endeavor thereto at the risk of their own Lives, must immediately be made free and above all may not be sold either by their Masters, or by Executor or Administrators of Estates.

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Title

Traditional Soviet Values for Children [Poster]

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[no text]

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Soviet propaganda posters presented positive images of healthy, active people engaged in useful service to the state, including children. This Soviet poster from 1953 was typical of this image. Its slogan, "Pioneers and Students, Get Interested in Modeling!", coupled with the image of a happy child in the open air on a bright, sunny day, suggested the positive results of state-approved actions. The Young Pioneer Organization of the Soviet Union was a Soviet youth organization that encouraged students to be physically active and take an interest in occupations appropriate for Soviet adults. Here the students are encouraged to develop an interest in aeronautics. Other Pioneer activities included traveling to the countryside to help with the spring planting or daily exercise in the form of military-styled calisthenics. Propaganda such as this poster was one method for the Soviet regime to create an image of the positive future, an important strategy to help avoid the reality of massive shortages of food and material goods following World War II.

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Divorce in the Soviet Union [Poster]

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One of Mikhail Gorbachev's most famous reform movements was 'glasnost' (openness), which allowed partial freedom of the press to address social problems and corruption within the Soviet Union. Among the issues raised during the 'glasnost' era were previously forbidden subjects such as the high rate of divorce. An example of this is the following poster, with its plaintive cry from the child in the foreground: "And what about me?" The father in the background seems to have some sort of illness, possibly as a result of alcoholism or one of the many other difficulties associated with the Soviet Union in the 1980s. The mother seems to have a large bruise on her face, suggesting spousal abuse. While these parents have an unhappy marriage, the poster reminds the viewer the greater damage is done to children with divorced parents. With this focus on the human cost of divorce for children, the Soviet government could publicly address genuine social problems without attacking the state or the Communist Party.

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Ancient Greek Girl Athlete [Sculpture]

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[no text]

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This unusual bronze figurine of a female runner was possibly made in or near Sparta, Greece, between 520-500 BCE. Ancient Sparta was the only Greek city-state that provided girls with public schooling including physical education. Girls were praised for their swiftness and likened to prized racehorses in choral songs (called partheneia) sung by girls' choruses in Sparta and elsewhere. Spartan "virgins" also participated in the Heraea, games held at Olympia every four years in honor of the goddess Hera. Winners received olive crowns, shared a cow they sacrificed to Hera, and were allowed to dedicate statues of themselves engraved with their names. The bronze rivet on her right foot suggests that this figurine was possibly attached to a vessel or utensil at one time.

In what ways does this girl's body reveal that she was athletic? What might her clothing tell us about notions of girlhood in Sparta? Female athletes wore a short off-the-shoulder tunic like the one donned by this runner. It more closely resembled the semi-nude bare-breasted style of the legendary Amazons than the ornate and heavily draped Korai "maidens" elsewhere in Greece. What might account for the varieties of girlhoods throughout the Greek world?

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Ancient Greek Adolescent Girls at Play [Sculpture]

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This small (5.5 inches high) terracotta sculpture was made in Greek southern Italy in the late fourth century BCE. It depicts two adolescent girls playing the game of "knucklebones" (astragaloi in Greek). The game was usually played like the modern game of "jacks": one threw the knucklebones in the air and attempted to catch as many as possible. They were also used like modern "dice." Each of the four long sides of the knucklebone had a value: the convex side was worth 3, the concave 4, and the two flat sides 1 and 6. Most knucklebones were made out of the actual ankle bones of sheep or goats, but fancier ones were made of ivory, bronze, or terracotta. Children of both sexes, adolescent girls, and young women played knucklebones as revealed by statues like this one as well as paintings on vases.

This statue is both a depiction of a game and a representation of gender ideals. Whereas girls in the nearby city-state of Sparta were taught to read and write and engaged in athletic competitions, those in Athens spent their girlhoods largely indoors practicing the domestic arts (e.g., spinning, weaving, cooking, and childcare). Athenian girls typically married at the age of 15 or so and spent the rest of their lives engaged in household activities.